


they're all desperate -

by alvaughn (orphan_account)



Series: pop psychology drabble series - [6]
Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Awkward Flirting, First Meetings, M/M, well tfb are a band but tøp aren't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4244595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/alvaughn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You didn’t tell me you were inviting him,” Josh says, and Brian grins, giving Josh a shrug. </p><p>“He came on his own,”</p>
            </blockquote>





	they're all desperate -

**Author's Note:**

> exciting things! the front bottoms got signed to fbr, which now means that i can use them as friends/label-mates for the guys in fics which is super cool. (a sidenote to tfb if they ever see this - sorry i looped you into my writing, you deserve Much Better than this) 
> 
> (also there's a small joke abt the daddy kink in here it's just a quick lil thing but if you're uncomfortable with that apologies!!)
> 
> title from i love you (but i hate your friends) by neon trees!

"They're planning something,"

Josh glances up towards Brian, eyeing him momentarily before looking towards the group of people huddled around one of the record bins. "What? How would you know?"

Brian shrugs, leaning against the counter on his elbows before he looks over his shoulder towards the group. His eyes linger on the tall boy with the tanned skin and tattoos on his eyes a little too long, and Josh almost wants to say something but he's sure the only thing that would come out of his mouth would reek with jealousy. He doesn't even know the guy's name yet but he'd definitely call dibs before Brian could. "I walked past them a couple of minutes ago and the short bleached blond guy said something about getting Tyler, who I _assume_ is the guy with tattoos you can't keep your eyes off of, a date,"

Josh ignores Brian's comment, only to straighten his back and clear his throat, "A date?"

"Yep," Brian nodded, popping his lips a bit before he glanced back at Josh. "But, I wouldn't worry too much about it, he didn't seem too interested. You should make a move already,"

"We both know I'm not going to do that," Josh sighed, and Brian gave him a 'you suck to be around but I'm sympathetic for you' look before standing up straight again.

"Hey! Are you still coming to my show on Friday?" Josh nodded, and Brian grinned. "Perfect, I can't wait. It should be the best one yet,"

"Super excited," Josh grinned earnestly at him before picking up the clipboard on the counter ahead of him and putting it underneath his arm. "I'm going to go through some of the boxes in the back, you okay out here for awhile?"

"Ugh, yes, dad, I am capable of maintaining the shop by myself until you find whatever records you're looking for," Brian said, swapping places with Josh. He leans forward onto his elbows again, staring at Josh with a look in his eyes that he can’t quite place. It’s something that Josh is sure won’t have a great outcome.

Josh pulls a face at Brian, crossing his arms over his chest. "Please don't call me dad. If we've made out before, I really don't think that's appropriate,"

"Would you rather me call you daddy?" Brian asked, laughing immediately as Josh's face flushed red and he stuttered out a _'no!'_ "I'm just fucking with you, man, go do your thing I'm fine here," Josh nodded, ducking his head before rushing behind a door marked _EMPLOYEES ONLY_. Brian waited a few moments, craning his neck as if he could looked behind the closed door before he moved from behind the counter towards the group of people who still hovered in the same small corner of the shop.

They all glanced up as he approached them, and he grinned broadly, "Hey, I'm Brian. Are you guys busy Friday?"

+

By the time Friday night rolls around, Josh is pretty sure that he’s going to kill Brian. They’re packed inside of Mat’s garage and the band is setting up their equipment on a makeshift stage Josh is sure isn’t safe at all, but he doesn’t care because he’s seething with anger when he grabs Brian’s wrist that isn’t on the neck of the guitar and tugs hard. Brian makes a noise of surprise, clutching the neck of the guitar so it doesn’t fall and break beneath him and he glares at Josh for a moment before smiling slyly. “Inside, now,” Josh’s jaw is clenched so the words come out much harsher than he intends them too, but either way, he wants Brian dead.

By the time they stumble through the crowd of people - which is pretty big, there’s practically no space to move because there’s most likely someone preoccupying spots everywhere around them, but they manage - and slip in through the garage door, Josh’s anger has melted itself mostly into anxiety. “What’s up, man?” Brian laughs, and Josh shoots him a glare, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You didn’t tell me you were inviting him,” Josh says, and Brian grins, giving Josh a shrug.

“He came on his own,”

“Oh, shut up, you totally fucking invited him. Guys like _that_ don’t come places like _this_ without being invited,”

“Are you implying that this is a bad place to be?” Brian asks, and there’s no real push behind his words. Josh thinks that he’s mostly just trying to shift the attention of the conversation away from himself.

“No, of course not,” Josh sighs, biting at the skin on the inside of his cheek. “It’s just that - I would’ve never come either unless you and Mat had talked me into it, so I’m pretty sure that either you or one of his friends had to talk him into it,”

“You never know that. Maybe he loves stuff like this, or maybe it _was_ his friends,” Brian says, and Josh opens his mouth to say something again but Mat’s sticking his head through the door, shaking his shaggy hair out of his eyes in a similar fashion as a dog would. It would make Josh want to laugh, but he's currently suffering from an overwhelming urge to throw up into the sink behind him.

“Hey guys, sorry to break up the conversation, but we should probably get the set started,” Brian nods to Mat, brushing past Josh and patting his shoulder before he makes his way into the warm heat of the garage again. Josh takes a minute after he hears the door close to compose himself because there’s a guy out there that he has a crush on, and this really wasn’t how he wanted to get acquainted with him.

+

Josh manages to find his place in front of the stage again, pressing past people who give him dirty looks but really, he couldn’t care less. “What’s up guys? We’re The Front Bottoms, and this is called Jim Bogart,” Mat counts them into the song, and there’s a sudden rush of emotion from both the band and the crowd. Josh is still astounded by the fanbase that they’ve grown just through word of mouth - they were still an unsigned band, but people loved them, and Josh was sure they weren’t going to be making their own EPs for much longer any time soon.

Halfway through the song, Josh finds his attention drawn to Tyler - he assumes that’s his name, because he hasn’t really spoken to him yet so he only has what Brian has told him to go by - who’s standing on the edge of the crowd, staring up at Brian with an unmistakable awe in his eyes. He smiles a bit, letting his eyes linger for a few long moments before he glances beside Tyler to a blonde, shorter man who just gives Josh a smirk. Josh recognizes him from the music store though he doesn’t know his name either. He ducks his head and blushes a bit before forcing himself to stare at Brian as he finishes up the song.

“Hey, guys,” Brian grins, and there’s a few people who yell back at him, mostly guys trying to show off to their friends if Josh had to guess. “Glad you came out tonight, sorry it’s like a thousand degrees. Midwest in the summer, right?” He laughs at that, giving Josh a smile before he moves his eyes towards the edge of the crowd where Tyler(?) and his friend are. “There’s some people I haven’t seen before in the crowd, so I hope you guys have a great night. Let’s get wasted after this, yeah?” Brian laughs, turning his head towards Mat and nodding once. They kick off into Lipstick Covered Magnet, and Josh moves through the crowd as they hit the first chorus. Brian’s idea of getting wasted wasn’t a bad one, and he already knew where the beer was - in the backyard, because that’s generally where they pushed everyone off too so they didn’t destroy any of their equipment in the garage.

By the time he gets out of the crowd and onto the grass, he notices that there are a few people lingering in the yard already, looking bored or concerned as they talk to each other. Josh makes his way over towards a cooler and pulls a beer out of it, not really concerned with what he was drinking because the guys usually didn’t break out their best stuff on nights like these, so he didn’t have to worry about it being too awful on him. Josh barely notices the hushed whispers behind him, someone muttering that they’re going back inside and if the other person doesn’t just fucking do it already, he’s going to kick their ass. A body finds itself next to his, and Josh glances from where he’s staring into the backyard of one of Mat’s neighbors through the chipped pieces in the fence. He glances over towards the person, blinking a few times when he notices that it’s the guy. The guy, like, the _potentially-named-Tyler-no-matter-what-his-name-is-he’s-really-cute_ guy.

“Hi,” The guy says after a moment, his fingers wrapped loosely around a bottle of beer that he doesn’t look too sure about.

“Hey,” Josh replies, cursing the red-flush that spreads across his skin after he stutters over the word.

“You’re the guy from the music store, right?” Cute guy asks, and Josh nods.

“Yeah,” He smiles a bit, sticking his free hand out for the guy to shake. “I’m Josh,”

The guy grins back, shaking Josh’s hand nervously, “I’m Tyler,”

Josh almost says, _oh so your name_ is _Tyler_ out loud but thankfully stops himself before he can, instead opting for, “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve seen you hanging around the store a lot, and I thought I’d have to introduce myself and help you find something the next time you came in,” It’s slightly more embarrassing that saying what his mind had previously supplied him with, but Tyler laughs nonetheless.

“Why’s that?” He asks, tongue sweeping across his lower lip afterwards. Josh tries not to focus too hard on it, just rolls his shoulders back and shrugs.

“You come in so often and never leave with anything, so I just assumed you could never find what you were looking for,”

“Oh, no,” Tyler smiles, “I was, uh, looking for something else,” He blushes a bit after speaking which solidifies Josh’s he’s hitting on me idea.

Josh clears his throat awkwardly, “How did you hear about tonight? I’ve never seen you around before, I wouldn’t assume this is your kind of thing,”

“Your friend invited me,” Tyler says, and Josh mentally curses Brian because he lied directly to his face even when Josh had confronted him, seeking the truth. He was going to have a lot to say to him whenever they got to work the next day. “You do this stuff often?”

Josh nods, “I’m here every time they have a show, so, basically every week,”

“That’s a lot of shows,” Tyler says, scrunching his nose up, and Josh laughs a bit before nodding.

“Yeah, but the band is pretty great, so it’s not an awful thing. I do whatever I can to support them, and if it means being the only one to show up to their shows, I’m all for it,”

“You’re a good friend, Josh,” Tyler smiles, ducking his head a bit. They stand in silence for a few moments before Tyler looks back towards Josh, biting at his lower lip. Josh’s eyes linger far too long on where his teeth are pressed into his lip, and he can tell Tyler notices before he takes far too long to release it from between his teeth. “This might be a little forward,” He says after a while, “But do you want to go somewhere else?”

Josh takes a swig from his now too lukewarm beer before placing it onto the cooler. “Yeah, that’d be great,” Tyler nods, setting his unopened beer onto the cooler beside Josh’s before they trek across the yard towards Tyler’s car. He’d been assigned designated driver for the night, but Jenna had been running late so she’d taken her own car which meant that he could get Pete home by the end of the night instead of Tyler having to take him home, which meant he was off scot-free for the rest of the night, Tyler explained to him. Josh listened as best he could, trying to make sense of the words though his mind was on overdrive because the guy he’s had a crush on for the past few weeks - if not longer - is taking him somewhere and they’re going to hang out, and fuck, Josh _really_ wants to kiss him.

“Do you really want to kiss me?” Tyler asks, stopping short as he unlocks his car. He stays on the curb beside Josh, and Josh nods even though he’s sort of pissed off that he’d said that aloud and Tyler had heard him. “Why don’t you?”

“Didn’t want to come on too strong and scare you away,” Josh mutters, and Tyler smiles a bit. Or, he thinks so because he refuses to look at Tyler right now.

“What a gentleman,” Tyler says, moving to cup Josh’s jaw before he pulls him in. The kiss is anything but perfect and it lasts mere seconds, but whenever they pull away from each other, there’s only a beat before Josh is pressing Tyler back against the side of the car and practically devouring him right then and there. It was the sort of kiss that made Josh feel breathless the moment his lips met Tyler’s, made him feel like there was much more that he should be doing but he couldn’t because kissing Tyler was just so damn good. Seriously, the guys mouth was probably what people wrote poetry about - the shape of his lips, the heat of his mouth, the press of his tongue against Josh’s own. Tyler’s fingers slid into Josh’s hair, tugging it a bit to pull Josh’s mouth away from his own. “We should go back to my place,” He breathed out, and Josh only nodded, letting Tyler shove him back a bit before he opened the passengers side door and practically ran around the car.

He kisses Josh once more before slipping the keys into the ignition, and all Josh can think is that the wait would definitely be worth it.

+

“I hate you, Sella,” Brian glances up at Josh as he walks through the door, and as Josh nears him, he can see a smile tempting to rise on the corners of his lips. “Don’t you even dare,”

“Have a good night last night?” Brian asks, and Josh rolls his eyes.

“You lied to me,”

Brian squints in confusion at Josh for a few seconds before it seems to finally click in his head just what Josh is talking about, and even when he realizes what it is, he just shrugs. “Whatever. It got you into his pants,”

Josh wants to say something witty as a response, but he’s not really a word czar like Brian happens to be, so he only mildly blushes and settles on, “I hate you so much,”

“The hickey on your neck says otherwise,” Brian laughs, reaching out to pat the side of Josh’s neck before he makes his way towards the store’s backroom. Josh slaps his own hand over the spot Brian had previously touched on his neck, and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet before shaking his head.

“You’re a dick!” He calls out, and Brian doesn’t even respond, but Josh can still hear him laughing from where he’s unpacking boxes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> you know where to find me! kudos / comments appreciated. love you!


End file.
